Broomfield Survey

The community survey is now open for your response. The link will be available until May 10th. Let your city and county know what you think. The link will be available until May 10th. Let your city and county know how you feel about Broomfield. The survey takes about 10 minutes to complete. If there are additional issues, not addressed in the survey, we hope that you will let the city council hear from you. You can contact them via e-mail or phone using the information at the bottom of this newsletter. b

Broomfield’s debt, unintended consequences…

As we have stated before, the city council would like to increase the debt by an extra $308M for a new library, a new police substation, and renovations to both the current library, and the police department. This would bring the debt load up to about $800M. With the revenues currently at around $530M, we are concerned about the ever-increasing debt the city is taking on and all the unintended consequences. During the regular meeting on April 25th there was a discussion about the Siena Reservoir Pump Station and the Pipeline project that would deliver water from the Siena Reservoir (a holding pond) to Glasser Reservoir (a water treatment reservoir). A schematic of the area is shown in this MAP. This project started in 2020 with an initial design and report phase for an initial cost of $176,000. In 2021, Siena Reservoir was sold to the Water Fund and an amendment to the original documents for the construction design increased the cost of the project by $4,706,103. In 2022, the council had to hire a company to perform the actual work for additional costs of $2,087,470. The added items included contracts, testing & environmental clearances, a second amendment for the design company, and an early-work project (EWP) for the construction. Now in 2023, additional costs include the late-work project (LWP) expenses, a third amendment for Muller to observe construction for an additional cost of $28,332,832. For this one CIP project, the total cost is around $35M. In the last few years, government spending has increased drastically due to shutting businesses down and paying people to stay at home. This excess spending results in inflation and is measured with the consumer price index (CPI). Businesses are not immune from inflationary pressures. In June 2021, the change in CPI from the year before was about 5.4%, which means the city, on all contracts pay more for goods and services. In June 2022, the change in CPI increased to 8.8% year-over-year, and in February 2023, the CPI was up 5% from the prior year. What does this mean? You not only are paying for the higher cost of items, but the government, which needs your money to function is paying higher prices and these higher prices get passed on to you. We do not know if inflation will increase or decrease in the future. Maybe we should encourage our city council to forgo wants and focus on needs until the economy stabilizes.

The Palisade Project – more debt capacity needed

Some projects can take many years to complete, and as we have seen, economies can change drastically within a few years. Palisade Park has two Metropolitan Districts, #1 (residential) and #2 (commercial). Any service plan must be approved by the jurisdiction in which they are located, namely, the city and county of Broomfield. The service plans were originally approved in September 2006 and amended and restated in October 2014. In this area, traffic has been a problem and so the developer, under the district, widened certain streets in the area to address traffic flow and is expected to be reimbursed by commercial entities upon completion of proposed construction. Due to the increased costs to the developer, they asked the city council to approve debt capacity by $30M, without increasing the mill levy to the district. The council was stunned and asked why this hadn’t been brought before them prior to this and how could this happen? The city manager explained that this was a good business decision by the developer, is a temporary increase until they either get paid back by the businesses, or loans can be refinanced at a lower interest rate. We again believe, that the city and county should be responsible and work on immediate needs because the future is highly unpredictable and we don’t know how long inflation will be with us. Government decisions affect the economy and the taxpayer is left with the burden to repay, either in the form of business expenses, sales tax, property tax, or savings and loans. The city and state need to slow down until we understand inflationary impacts to current projects.



Senate Bill 213: Affordable Housing or State Central Planning

Last week, the City and County of Broomfield asked their constituents to write their legislators about SB23-213 and the harm it would cause to local government zoning. Legislators Zenzinger and Kirkmeyer wrote a Colorado Sun Op-Ed discussing the need for citizen input for matters of significant impact to the community. The article also state that “Decisions impacting communities’ future would be made by an unelected commission of 13 people in Denver, appointed by the government and legislature,…” Jon Caldara also wrote an opinion piece (see original link) discussing the importance of keeping some of the legislation in the bill, such as urban growth boundaries and loosening restrictions when homeowners build on their own property. Mr. Caldara explains how government policy has led to increased prices and scarcity when 98% of Colorado is unoccupied. The Colorado legislators (namely Gov. Polis) want more stack-n-pack housing which produces systemic racism because it prices minorities and first-time homeowner’s out of the market. Our governments also want the first right to buy your property taking that decision out of your hands also. Developers have been leaving Denver and the metropolitan area, because they can’t build cheaply without going broke. This is the same old story, different dance. So, the first problem appears to be that their policies don’t solve the affordable housing problem, the second problem is that we have unelected bureaucrats running things (think CDC, NIAID, EPA, Boards of Health), and third, the City and County of Broomfield doesn’t want to be told what to do and they want to control their own space, but they don't want the same input from you. We didn’t vote on marijuana establishments, we didn’t vote on property tax increases, and we didn’t have a say in businesses being shut down during COVID. Maybe a solution would be for the government to work on different priorities such as roads and infrastructure and let the homeowners, renters, and commercial business work freely in the market. 



What’s the rush?

In another story about state central planning in Colorado, it appears Governor Polis wants to be the first state to dictate energy requirements for businesses. HB 21-1286 was passed in 2021, but the commission and CDPHE (Colorado Department of Health and Education, another unelected board) didn’t have a final draft resolution until last month. The current details of the legislation are expected to be heard from May 16-19, which rushes current stakeholders review of the legislation. Not only was it rushed through but the resolution is full of “to be determine (TBD)” items which is a little like have a blank page when signing a contract. The stakeholders charge that the state has not looked at the effect this bill will have on citizens and businesses: (1) vastly understated costs, (2) overstated savings benefits, (3) no evaluation of facts and conditions that make Colorado unique. Do you want a look ahead to what impact this will have? Let’s revisit Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” which resulted in 30 to 45 million Chinese citizens dead due to famine, execution, and forced labor and were the consequences of central planning. We may not have the death toll associated with that policy, but the economy in Colorado may die a cruel death. Central Planning has never worked and never will. Our leaders do not have prophetic powers.



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